


i was defeated // you won the war

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: F/M, Guilt, Post-Mass Effect Andromeda, Reconciliation, Spoilers, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-03
Packaged: 2018-10-14 13:18:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10537296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: The last time he’d been here, the place was on a detonator. Now, it had purpose.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I said I wasn't going to title this after an ABBA song and yet here I am. Stuck with a fic who's title is from “Waterloo.”

Electronic transmission, unknown source.  
//decryption protocol initialized  
//3… 2…  
//decrypted.  
  
//You're a lucky man, Vidal. - S. Kelly  
  
  
  
//attached: protectionorder.xkport.ofile\\\\\\\cgLO.3756.7777

These days, Reyes wasn’t much given to being surprised. Cultivating the life he had, experiencing all the wonders and splendors Andromeda offered daily as he did—death, destruction, betrayal, all completely normal, exciting, perhaps too much so—for these reasons, a perfectly mundane message shouldn’t have fazed him.

Sloane Kelly always had been different, he supposed.

So it was with a hint of trepidation and a spare, useless datapad that he opened the attached file. Always best to be safe. If a virus was about to render his equipment useless, he didn’t want his first favorite pad destroyed. But he was curious, too, and the throbbing rush of blood in his ears wasn’t enough to stop him for long, especially not when he was merely _fazed_.

But no. There was nothing strange about the message and the attachment displayed rather more quickly than he expected.

“A writ of safe passage through Kadara Port?” Stunned, he read through the file a second time, searched for an angle, this time mouthing the words to slow himself down. Was it a trick? A trap? Did Sloane want him dead or worse?

The writ answered that, too. 

There, at the bottom: //You’ve got a powerful friend in a powerful place. Tread wisely. She won’t be able to throw her weight around with me a second time.

Reyes snorted and shook his head, pushing his hand through his hair, mussing the side part and undermining the work done by the last good tube of gel left in Andromeda. “Well, shit.”

He’d only had one friend in Andromeda who could do this, but he’d scuttled that friendship at his earliest convenience and in record time for him, too. Not even his most hate-filled exes had gotten as unhappily screwed by Reyes as quickly as she had. And most of them only had a gun and harsh words for him.

If he was honest, he’d scuttled more than that and still regretted it. He’d thought, for a brief, almost pleasant moment, that leaving Kadara in Sloane’s hands would be the hardest thing he’d ever done. In his way, he loved the place. And he believed Sloane was a poor leader for it, that one day Kadara would pay and everyone who lived there along with it. 

Despite his lofty rationales, his fear of leaving, his need to undermine Sloane, it turned out saying goodbye to a person—one particular person—was harder still. 

_You’re a hell of a woman, Ryder._

And now she’d proved herself so yet again.

He didn’t deserve this from her. Even if he had helped her first, in the end he’d betrayed her trust in him. Knowingly so, despite his genuine fondness for her and her fondness in turn for him. 

If they ever met again, what would she think? Could she forgive him? Was this a gesture suggesting as much?

_Don’t read anything into this, Reyes. Probably she just thinks you can be useful. Maybe she wants your gratitude. That is all. She couldn’t want…_

To believe so would have been nice. Comforting. He could have understood it if she wanted something from him that dangling a carrot before eyes could procure. 

He suspected Ryder was better than that and found himself disappointed that she likely didn’t realize she had something else over on him. 

He really did enjoy owing her. 

And now he did. In a big, big way. 

Smiling, he transferred the writ into every device he owned. Kadara could be his once again. And maybe it would be better this time. Maybe Sloane had learned something and would do better. People tended to be where the Pathfinder was concerned. 

Perhaps he didn’t have to be The Charlatan to make his mark any longer. 

But a second chance?

He could work with that. 

*

He stepped off the transport and knew immediately that something had changed here. Kadara was different. He just didn’t know how. He knew why though. There was nowhere that she didn’t step that remained untouched. Quite literally so in many cases.

The Pathfinder. Sara Ryder. Beautiful and bold and brashly fun. The perfect combination of irreverent and dutiful. She was fair and—

_And that’s enough, Reyes. Next you’ll be writing poetry about her, too._

_And you’re_ terrible _at poetry._

Breathing deeply, he sighed and scanned the skyline outside of Kadara Market. It looked exactly the way he remembered. Smelled mostly the same, too. Dust blew in from the slums as it always had and the sulfuric tang of the springs still stung the inside of his nose, though it had lessened since the last time he was here. 

Dockworkers and pirates and smugglers of every sort bustled and shouted their way across the port, fitting ships with guns and illegally—by Milky Way standards anyway—modified thrusters. For a moment, Reyes was startled.

They looked like they were going to war. And not just the myriad little wars that broke out in the slums, hidden away to make the rest of Kadara seem more settled than it was. No, this looked like real war.

But they all worked in tandem, practically dancing around one another with how tuned they were to each other. Not a single fight broke out as Reyes watched despite the notorious hatred the dockworkers had for pirates had for smugglers. Strange, for Kadara. Strange for Sloane.

Strange for just about any place in Andromeda. 

The last time he’d been here, the place was on a detonator. Now, it had purpose.

His hands formed fists inside the pockets of his trousers. Turning away from the majority of the work going on, he ducked his head and strode toward the market entrance, intent to figure out what was going on. Umi would know. Umi—

“Hey, watch it,” a turian said, his armor-covered arm striking Reyes’s shoulder. His eyes flashed, bright with warning, and his talons stretched and flexed toward the pistol holstered at his side. This was more like the Kadara Reyes knew. So not all had changed. That was good to know.

The Charlatan had been important to this city, but Reyes was no one. Reyes had been no one even when he was The Charlatan purposefully. A few would remember him, but random individuals… no. It should have rankled more than it did. For others it would, he thought. But for himself?

He preferred anonymity.

“Excuse me,” he replied, diffident, laying on as much charm as he could muster. Sometimes that worked. Even on turians. Freeing his hands from his pockets, he lifted them. _Mea culpa_. “Would you be able to tell me just what is going on here?”

“Wow,” the turian answered, annoyed and morbidly intrigued by Reyes’s ignorance, like he wanted to stick Reyes under a microscope and study him, but he didn’t have the time. Barring that, he looked Reyes up and down. “You just wake up from cryo or something? Sloane wants us to hit Meridian. Now. It’s all anyone’s been talking about for days.”

“Meridi— _what_ are you talking about? What is Meridian?” _And why haven’t I heard about it?_ He fought to keep the edge out of his voice. Whatever it was, Sloane was throwing everything at it. And weirdest of all, everyone else was going along with it. Not even Sloane could accomplish that so quickly. The Charlatan was gone, but the Collective still existed. Dissidents still existed. There should’ve been someone arguing against this. Somewhere.

No, something else was going on here.

The turian rolled his eyes and his mandibles flared with impatience. “Go talk to Sloane if you’re so interested. I have work to do.”

Reyes grabbed the turian by his bony wrist as he tried to push his way past. “Tell me.” He twisted slightly and pushed his thumb into the one vulnerable spot just under what passed for a palm. “Now.”

Ripping his arm from Reyes’s grip, he scoffed. “The Pathfinder needs our help. That’s what Sloane said.” And he said it like he had any right to that title. Brushing himself down, he stabbed the point of one sharp talon in Reyes’s sternum. That hurt a little, but Reyes didn’t let it show. “Now fuck off, will you?”

Reyes made a placating gesture with his hands. A crooked smile bloomed across his mouth. “Your wish,” he said, his mind already half a galaxy away. 

The turian’s fringe cut through the air as he spun away, taking the long route to wherever he was going. They made them smart here. That turian was never going to let anyone grab him by the wrist again. “Unbelievable.”

But the turian hardly mattered now.

The Pathfinder. And though Reyes was a betting man, there was no need to place a wager on which one the turian meant. 

The smile he wore stretched into a grin, unable to be hidden or dimmed. It was easier to cheer this development than let himself feel the churning worry that lapped at his abdomen, like the sea as it rushed in and in and in again to wear away at the shore. It would not relent, not even if he acknowledged it.

Best, then, to avoid acknowledging it. Safer anyway.

She must be in deep shit if she was getting Sloane’s help. And they must all be in deep shit if Sloane was willing to give it with this much alacrity. 

Reyes wished Ryder had told him. Gotten the information to him somehow. Let him help. He would have helped. He hadn’t burned all his bridges. 

Only the most important ones. 

But he still had resources. Or could get them. He’d built himself up from less. In his circles, no one held a little betrayal between enemies against one another. Sloane would probably never allow him to get close enough to her to make another pass at Kadara Port. He was more okay with that than he thought he’d be.

Especially if they remained united for a common purpose. A better purpose.

He’d read that an Initiative outpost had been set up here. That was a start. It suggested to him that Sloane could learn how to play nice. Maybe he could just enjoy what the Pathfinder had given to him. Maybe Kadara could be a home he didn’t have to improve via takeover.

And maybe he could just be smarter about how he went about it this time. There was always a deeper shadow out there and despite the improving atmosphere, the fresh shine of the sun in the sky, the life that had begun to teem, Reyes was sure there was still a place for him here.

“Thank you,” he said, to no one or to the Pathfinder, as he walked toward the city’s main entry point, feeling like the only one who was entering the place because there were so many flooding the docks. It was… something else to witness it and he slipped and shoved his way through. It might have been something even Reyes couldn’t have imagined accomplishing. For all of his hopes, he hadn’t considered this.

Perhaps he would pay Sloane a visit after all. Push his luck a little bit.

He really did need to know how she’d done it. The Pathfinder. Not Sloane.

Sloane, he didn’t care about, but she might give have an answer for him that he’ll never get from Sara. If nothing else, it should be interesting hearing what she has to say.

*

Sunlight streamed in through the slats of the window behind Sloane’s chair, but Sloane was not on it. Here he thought she didn’t leave the thing unless she was challenged by someone like The Charlatan.

“Well, well,” Sloane said. He’d expected her to be lounging on her throne, that ridiculous object that only typified the problems here, put them on display, gave them a pedestal. “You’re a cheeky bastard, aren’t you?”

There was an assault rifle digging into his spine that significantly limited the responses he might have given. Respect could be earned, bought, or forced. And here, she’d gotten all three out of him: she’d bought it with the writ, forced it with the rifle. And because she wasn’t resting on her metaphorically cushioned seat, she might have earned a bit of it. She actually looked to be preparing, issuing demands and commands to her lieutenants with as much certainty as Reyes had ever seen. Here, she seemed a leader, when before she was anything but.

“I was told to come here,” he answered, every bit the cheeky bastard she accused him of being.

It wasn’t a lie. Technically speaking.

“Who told you that?” she asked, peering at him with contempt and amusement both, an experience Reyes wasn’t unfamiliar with.

“A strapping young turian on the docks. Though he did have a bit of a mouth on him.”

“Great.” She nodded, sharp, at the assault rifle wielding goon behind him. “Kaetus, no need to be quite that familiar, hmm? I think Mr. Vidal here has learned a very important lesson. Hasn’t he?”

“Except for today, I don’t intend to demand an audience from you if that’s what you mean.” _Not yet anyway. Not now. We’ll see though_.

“Good.” Her hand flicked imperiously toward another goon, indicating one of the many crates stacked carefully about the room. “Now why are you here? I see it didn’t take long for you to get my message.”

Reyes shrugged. “Why wait? This is home.”

“That’s cute.” She frowned. “I don’t care what you think Kadara is. Why are you _here_? In my presence? I would like for you to be anywhere but.”

Clearing his throat, he shifted his weight to the balls of his feet and back again. Settled, he could be settled. “That turian I just told you about mentioned the Pathfinder. He said Kadara was taking the fight to Meridian. What’s going on?”

Sloane’s brow arched as she frowned harder, the expression tugging at the scar around her mouth. She crossed her arms and stared at Reyes, still and silent, long enough that he grew uncomfortable with her scrutiny. It made his skin crawl and made the urge to fidget almost impossible to ignore. But ignore it he did, tipping his chin up instead, staring her down right back. He’d have an answer from her if they had to stand here until the end of time and he made sure she knew it. He wasn’t afraid of her.

“Where did you go to ground, Vidal? You really didn’t hear?” Lifting her arm, she engaged her omnitool and tsked, the orange of it bright and searing despite the brightness of the room. “Playback audio.”

It was Sara’s voice. As fierce as he’d ever heard it, a call to arms, an open invitation to… He listened, disbelieving, until he could listen no more. “You’re attacking the kett?” His voice shook and he hoped—he could only hope at this point—that Sloane didn’t notice. “ _You_ are attacking the kett?” He couldn’t think about Sara readying to do the same, completing her own preparations with only her crew of misfits to help her. “You?”

And he hadn’t known. About any of it.

He sneered, angry both at her and at himself. “You won’t even protect your own people. Why would you do this?”

Sloane rolled her eyes. “Darling, I’m too busy to field criticisms from a failure like you,” she said. Turning her attention away, she nodded at another of her compatriots, who immediately scurried away to complete whatever task Sloane needed of her. How she knew what to do was beyond Reyes. “All I know is the Pathfinder asked me for a favor and I’ve delivered for her three times now. What have _you_ done?”

Grimacing, Reyes crossed his arms and exhaled. His instinct was to… to… he didn’t know what. As often as violence found him, the impulse to commit that violence came late to him, if it did at all. Murder was… a fact of life here and in a lot of places in Andromeda. He dealt with it and that was that. But for a moment, his hand itched to strike out, formed a tight fist that made the leather of his gloves creak. “You don’t know the first thing about what I’ve done.”

Kaetus tried to block him from leaving, but he shoved past the turian, unheeding now of the rifle he carried. “I know enough!” Sloane called, a parting shot across the bow, and laughed. He didn’t catch the entirety of what she said next, but it did include the word ‘pathetic,’ which was more than enough for him to make a guess.

Stomping his way through the city to the slums wasn’t nearly as satisfying as he’d have liked it to be, but by the time he reached Tartarus, he felt more at ease. He was home. And Sara had given him a bulletproof shield against his enemies here: he could relax if he wanted to. It was a gift beyond anything he deserved even if relaxation wasn’t something he much cared for. Room to breathe, maybe, that was what it was.

He still didn’t deserve it.

Whatever the case may have been, he would repay it if he had a choice in the matter.

How he would accomplish this, he couldn’t say, but that had never stopped him from acting before. 

The Pathfinder deserved at least that much from him. 

Probably more. 

Definitely more. 

But he had no idea if he’d be able to do enough for her.

*

Keema was the easiest to locate and, more importantly, the least likely to shoot him on sight on the off-chance they didn’t care about Sloane’s protection order. That or someone had put out a hit on him while he was gone. There were several people he’d pissed off with his own name and face still around.

He knew both possibilities were nearly impossible, but one shouldn’t take chances when lives were on the line. 

Particularly his own. 

“This is quite the surprise,” she said, a pleased smile on her lips as she sauntered toward him in Tartarus. Usually, she refused to meet him here, but when he’d called, she’d agreed readily. A homecoming gift, she’d called it. Proof that the galaxy had gone topsy-turvy as far as he was concerned. “It’s good to see you back where you belong.”

“Is that true?” he asked, arms stretched wide across the back of the bench he always sat at. “You always were good for a confidence boost.”

“Yes, despite myself.” She sat next to him on the bench and placed her hand on his knee. He’d been confused by this at first, the casual way angarans touched one another, but he took comfort in it now knowing it meant nothing more than what it was intended to be. “Kadara is less exciting without you here.”

“Funny. Everywhere else is less exciting because it’s not here.” He sipped from his bottle, the metallic taste of its lip familiar and welcome to him. There were no shitty whiskeys like the shitty whiskeys that could be found in Tartarus. Something about the stills here, he assumed.

“I believe it.” She glanced around the empty room, a quicksilver quirk of her lips the only indication of her amusement. “So why did you call me here?”

“Can’t I just want to see you?” He wouldn’t say as much, but a friendly face was a welcome one. To be even more honest, well. He’d already been more honest. At least with himself. And Keema knew him well enough to guess the pertinent details. He’d missed her friendship, their history; he was behind on all the information that kept him and the people in his charge—who used to be in his charge, he had no one now—safe; he needed her.

“What is it your people say? There’s always a first time?”

“There’s a first time for everything.”

“Quite.” Inspecting her bottle, she bit her lip. Her eyes shone the way all angaran eyes did, ethereal and spectacular, and in another life where Reyes needed lovers more than he needed friends, he thought he might have…

No. _No_. Now he was just trying to pretend things were easier. Keema was easy. Kadara was easy. It was Ryder who was a mystery, a complication. She was the very worst sort of enigma—the kind who presented themselves as anything but.

“Can you…” He cleared his throat and looked away. It shouldn’t have been so difficult get the words out. Keema never made fun of him for excesses of emotion despite how rarely those occurred; she never mocked him for his occasional bout with sentimentality. Whether it was purely an angaran thing or a Keema thing or both, he hadn’t yet discovered. He knew he was safe. She would guard his heart. “The Pathfinder convinced Sloane Kelly to allow me back on Kadara.”

Keema smile softened, slow, as she took in his words. “I guessed that much the moment your voice came over the comms. Sloane wouldn’t have allowed you back due to anything less than the Pathfinder’s intervention.”

Leaning back, he scrubbed his hand over his face, knuckled at the smooth, shaved line of his jaw. “I have no idea why she would do this for me.”

“Reyes,” Keema said, despairing of him. He could tell it by the way she said his name. “Be serious. You know why she’d do it.”

“The way I left things with her,” he said, shaking his head. No, it wasn’t that simple. “It wasn’t as gentlemanly as I would have liked.”

Keema’s mouth turned in a thoughtful frown, her eyes sliding closed slowly. She drew a long, deep sip of her drink. Swallowing, she released a pent-up breath and tilted her head back. She also leaned back, almost into his space, so close most people would have suspected something. Another angaran habit that had thrown Reyes at first. From anyone else, he’d think she wanted more from him than he could give. But from her, it was merely her way. Angarans were the very definition of touchy-feely.

It was, he thought reluctantly, nice. And the urge to wrap his arm around her shoulders nearly overwhelmed him.

“You’re always less gentlemanly than you would like,” Keema answered, pondering, like she genuinely believed Reyes’s problem was worth her time and attention. “That hasn’t hurt you. Much.”

_It has now. And not just me_.

“This is different. I didn’t think it through. I—”

“You made a mistake.” Keema shrugged, a habit she’d picked up from Reyes. He wished he could’ve given her a better one instead. “It looks like the Pathfinder has forgiven you it.”

“No.” His hand cut through the air and the nonsense of that statement. She’d never even acknowledged his last message to her. This was the first he was hearing about her in months. “That’s not it.”

“Then perhaps you should ask her,” Keema said. It was such a sensible suggestion.

But Reyes was stubborn. “That is even less likely than the Pathfinder’s forgiveness.”

“You would know, Reyes,” she said, conciliatory.

Reyes grimaced, fingertips tapping against the side of his bottle. “I don’t. That’s the problem.”

Sighing, Keema shifted, hitching her leg onto the bench and getting into his face. Her bony knee jabbed him in the thigh. Poking him in the shoulder, she narrowed her eyes. “I’ve given you options. If you don’t like them, that’s your prerogative.” Having spoken, her face cleared and she smiled at him again. “But Reyes, there is time yet. Your Pathfinder has given us that time. Just don’t squander it.”

Reyes’s head thudded against the wall as he groaned in annoyance. “Yes, Keema,” he replied, dutiful, but feeling contrary, too. Like he might do that just to spite her. It wouldn’t have been the first time. And it probably wouldn’t be the last. “I didn’t actually call you out here for advice.”

“Just commiseration, is that right?” She nodded. “You don’t know me very well then.”

“I know you perfectly well,” he answered. Tapping at his omnitool, he ordered another pair of drinks for them and wondered how his life had reached this point. Being maudlin was for other people. Reyes had better things to do with his time. Like plan a second run at Kadara. “But I don’t always have to like it.”

He wouldn’t be planning another run at Kadara, he realized that much quickly.

“I wouldn’t expect you to.”

The door beeped and slide open, one of the bartenders stepping into the room with fresh bottles. Keema looked on, approving, and took hers with a gracious thank you.

“Thanks,” Reyes said, distracted, tipping the bottle toward the bartender in acknowledgment. It was cool against his palm, sweating already against his skin. His eyes followed the bartender back out of the room and once the door was safely closed again, he clicked the bottle against Keema’s. “Cheers, huh?”

But Keema was impossible to distract. “Reyes, I think you underestimate both yourself and the Pathfinder.”

“Maybe,” he said, cryptic. “But we don’t have to find out, do we?”

“I suppose not.” Her elbows touched her knees as she hunched forward. “So what are you going to do instead?”

“I’ll help Sloane help the Pathfinder the way I always do.” _From the shadows_.

*

Procuring guns and ammo was easy, child’s play practically. Funneling them to Sloane’s crew was also easy. Demolitions tech, a little more difficult, but he did what he could there, too. Scavenged shield boosters and light-bending stealth cloaks were the most difficult of all, but he scared up a few of those, too.

He’d thought it would heal the many tiny tears that had accumulated in his heart.

Doing this might have patched up a few of them, but he still felt as empty as when he’d started. And though ‘started’ may have meant a few days, if that, he’d hoped to feel some effect. Pride, at least: he’d never been better at his job than now. And relief: he was doing something concrete for Sara and for her exclusively. And maybe some joy: he _loved_ his work. When he didn’t have to worry about civil wars breaking out, it was great. Excitement. Adventure. Sometimes doing good for people who weren’t him and weren’t being helped by the leadership back on the Nexus. Sometimes doing bad to people who deserved it.

He provided a much needed service in this galaxy.

That was nothing to be ashamed of. And yet, even as he scrolled through each and every manifest that was sent to Sloane, only one layer of plausible deniability between himself and her, courtesy of Keema, he felt nothing.

Nothing except grim disappointment that this was all he was capable of doing.

What was the Pathfinder managing to do? Right this moment, how was she preparing? Where were her thoughts? What did she want most? What did she need? Would she find shield boosters and cloaks and ammo useful?

Of course she would. Who didn’t? But would she find them useful coming from _him?_ That was another question entirely.

Not that it mattered. These supplies were for Sloane. Not Sara. Sara didn’t even know. His influence was indirect. He could pretend they had nothing to do with Sara.

“What are you doing?” he asked himself, swiping his hand as the orange glow of his omnitool faded into nothing. He’d done what he could in the time allotted. Now?

Now, he waited.

Just as he was closing up the storage container he’d procured the last time he was in Kadara and locking it, his comm chimed in his ear. It wasn’t any more obtrusive than the noise of the slums around him and yet it immediately grated on him.

“Reyes,” he said, tight. There weren’t many people anywhere who had his comm info and he didn’t particularly want to talk to any of those who did.

“Vidal.” It was Sloane. He should have known. “Get your gear. I don’t trust you in my port when I’m not there.”

“Excuse me?” He eyed Tartarus across the way, its pink neon out of place in the dank, dark shadows of the slums. Though, he had to admit, they were looking less slummy now than they had before. The Pathfinder’s work, no doubt. By all accounts, the prosperity brought by the Initiative outpost was being reaped everywhere, if not equally. And Sloane wouldn’t have allowed even that much of her own volition. “What is it you want from me then? I’m not just going to leave now—”

“You _are_ leaving. In fact—” She paused and drew in a truly dramatic breath. “—you’re coming with me.”

Reyes’s heart seized in his chest, a flush of adrenaline, unusual and mortifying, pulsing through him. He wasn’t afraid. He didn’t _do_ fear. Not in Andromeda. And yet the thought of going… it froze him in place, creeped cold through his blood and bones. Anything that took Sloane from Kadara had to be big and anything that brought him closer to Sara was out of the question. “I don’t think so.”

“And I don’t think you understand. You don’t have a choice.”

“So you let me back into your city just to force me immediately out of your city?”

“I wasn’t expecting you to drop everything and come slinking back this soon. If you’d waited a few more days, everything would’ve been fine.” She laughed at him, deep and condescending. A few choice words flitted through his mind, but he spoke none of them. “Did you really miss us that much?”

“Would you consider a temporary house arrest?”

“How about you do what I say and we pretend you aren’t trying to wriggle your way out of it?”

Reyes bit back a choice retort. It wouldn’t do him any good. And it wouldn’t get him out of this. If she didn’t trust him, she didn’t trust him. There would be no arguing with her. “How soon?”

“ _Now._ We’re not fucking around here anymore, Reyes. You're on my ship in an hour or Kaetus is locking you up for good or shooting you. I haven’t made my decision yet, but only one of those would violate my agreement with the Pathfinder.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Maybe not. Do you want to test me and find out?”

“This much bickering is pointless,” he said, beaten. He had little recourse from antagonizing Sloane now. Better to save it for when he found his footing. Even if he didn’t believe her threats fully, it made sense to play nice now. “I’ll be there.”

So. Meridian. He was going to get a more thorough answer on that score than he really needed.

He regretted that fact more than he cared to admit.

After all, he wasn’t the best man in this galaxy. Sometimes, he wasn’t even a good one. Not by a long shot. And some things were bigger than even his comprehension could encompass. Meridian was one of them.

He wasn’t scared. He couldn’t admit to that. But he did allow himself to feel concern. For himself and on Sara’s behalf. 

What could a smuggler do against the entirety of the kett army that he hadn’t already done after all?

*

“Welcome aboard,” Sloane said, mocking, as he tramped up the ramp of her ship. She looked tired despite the good humor of her tone, weary. And wary, too, of Reyes.

He was beginning to believe there was some good in her that this whole situation that Andromeda had merely tarnished. A situation not so different from a lot of people’s, he guessed, just that she’d ended up on the top of the scrap heap at the end of it. If he wanted to be fair, he could admit that she wouldn’t have agreed to his duel otherwise. Even bringing the Pathfinder only mitigated things so much and Sloane couldn’t know what kind of danger would befall her. What if the Pathfinder had sided with him? What if she hadn’t seen the sniper in time?

Sloane hadn’t died.

But he hadn’t either. 

To someone who was as all-or-nothing as Sloane, that was as good as a loss no matter how much she spun it after the fact.

That didn’t mean he liked her and it didn’t mean she should be in charge of Kadara, but he could… sympathize.

After a fashion.

“Kindly fuck off, please,” he answered, stepping past her. Pasting a smile on his face, he turned and faced her, walking backward into the cargo hold, his shoulder brushing against one of her more loyal goons. Not Kaetus, but someone Reyes recognized all the same though the name now escaped him. Reyes had memorized so many names in his time. And now he didn’t have to. What was the point when Sloane had won for the time being?

“Excuse me,” he said, baring his teeth in an even more impressive smile as he clapped said loyal goon on the shoulder. 

The goon stared grimly back, probably trying to be intimidating and too unsure of it to be effective. 

It was a failure, of course, and he seemed to realize it quickly enough, but the attempt was cute. So he winked at the man for good measure and was rewarded with a deeply annoyed glare. 

Ah, now that was familiar. Perhaps they would all—especially him—get through this just fine after all. 

*

They didn’t get through it ‘just fine,’ facing down a fleet of kett ships ensured the opposite. Reyes was useless when he was stuck on a bridge; he’d always been a feet on the ground kind of smuggler, a talk his way out of trouble kind of smuggler. And you couldn’t be either of those things with a kett, he’d found, but they did make it out alive. Sloane’s ship was intact and Meridian proved itself every bit as beautiful as everyone claimed it was. 

Just looking out the bridge’s viewport confirmed that.

Reyes hated it. And he hated it all the more when he got to hear Sara over the comms. Hear her. For the first time in months. And he didn’t know where on this god-forsaken manufactured planet from hell she was or how she looked or what she’d gone through to get them all to this point.

All he knew was she sounded terrible as she spoke, exhausted and elated and strung out all at once. As soon as he recognized it, he pushed his way through the awed crowd that had shoved its way onto the bridge in the aftermath of the battle. Their eyes remained focused on the view before them, the greens of the trees and grasses, the blues of that artificial sky. He wasn’t even sure they parsed Sara’s speech to them, so slack-jawed and amazed were they.

It was a new home and Reyes couldn’t give a good goddamn about any of it. 

Kadara remained as fine a place as any for him. 

But Sara was here. 

And that was what mattered. 

“Where are you going?” Sloane yelled as he reached the hatch. 

“None of your business,” he yelled back. “You can’t order me around here. We’re not on Kadara.”

If she couldn’t guess, he didn’t need to make it easy for her. And if she could guess, he didn’t want to know about it.

“Just don’t shoot my ship.”

_Your ship never did anything to me,_ he thought, bemused. _Why would I shoot it?_

He didn’t know exactly where he was going and he could only hope there weren’t any nasties lurking anywhere, kett that hadn’t been destroyed or remnant waiting to be activated, because his sidearms wouldn’t be enough in those circumstances, he didn’t think. But he had a good idea from the spark of improvised fireworks, the array of shuttles zooming in one particular direction that he needed to end up where they were all going.

His lungs protested even just looking at the distance, but his purpose was clear, his path easy enough to find.

He felt as though he had no choice but to go.

Keema was right. He couldn’t run.

But he had no problem hating like hell that it was Sloane that had forced his hand.

*

The ark was a mess by the time he arrived. It had probably started its time on Meridian in a mess given that it had struck the earth, but with so many people milling around and demanding entrance, it looked even worse. Shoving his way through, garnering more than his fair share of dirty looks all the while, he finally reached the front. Breathing heavily, his skin tight with sweat and the sensation of too many people around him, he stared up at the thing.

It was so huge. Bigger than he remembered from those early vids about the ark. The Hyperion, it was called, if he remembered correctly. It felt like all twenty-thousand humans who’d come on it and then some wanted back onto it here and now. Which was ridiculous. More than a few had died already. And not just in the Scourge disaster.

Reyes had made his own contributions on that front.

But here, now, it didn’t matter. It was a press and not just of humans, no. There were salarians, turians, angarans. Asari and krogan, too. So many of all of them that Reyes was a little surprised a fight hadn’t broken out yet.

It was nothing like the Nexus during the mutiny—and everything like it.

He scanned around him, searching for a way in through the entry bay that was closed, cordoned off by impromptu barricades made of blast shields and security officers. There would be no getting past that, not until leadership decided to let people in. And who knew how long that would be?

_Think, Reyes. How are you going to get in?_ His chances of sweet-talking his way past anybody were slim. And he didn’t want to embarrass the Pathfinder by pursuing more circumspect means of entry. 

The ark was huge. He could do it. 

But he was going to keep that in his back pocket. There had to be a better way. 

Nobody would let him speak to the Pathfinder, but maybe…

“Pardon me,” he said, apologetic as he approached the nearest guard, well aware he was interrupting. Definitely no troublemaker here, no way. No liars neither. Smiling awkwardly and brushing at the back of his head, he opened his palms wide. 

Regardless, the security officer he chose to pester wasn’t fully sold on him. She eyed him suspiciously and frowned. Her hand twitches toward her pistol. “What do you want? You’ll be let in soon.”

There was a time, long ago, when that would have intimidated him. He tried to remember that naïveté. Raising his hands slightly, he cleared his throat. “Right. Of course.” He let his eyes fall to the floor. “I was just hoping someone could get a message to Vetra Nyx.” Sara had spoken of her, about all of her crew, as they watched the sun rise over Kadara Market, buzzed on the last dregs of the finest bottle of whiskey in Andromeda. And though he hadn’t met her like he had a few of the others, Reyes’s hunch was that she was his best bet here. 

Like attracted like.

“Who?”

Reyes nearly rolled his eyes. This was how people like Reyes were allowed to operate so effectively. Few people had heads for details. They forgot the ones who got shit done. It was always a mistake. “Vetra Nyx. She’s helping with stabilizing the situation here.” He didn’t know if this was true or not, but it sounded like the kind of thing she’d do. “Sloane Kelly wishes to help.” That, Reyes knew was a lie. “She sent me to facilitate. Said I should talk to Vetra.” Throwing his hand up to indicate the whole of the crashed ark around them, he made his final point. “You need help, don’t you?”

The woman stared at him for a moment longer. Long enough that Reyes wasn’t sure she’d go for it or not. If not, well, maybe he could hack into the Hyperion’s systems and find Vetra’s comm channel himself.

That was a little more illegal than Reyes wanted to be right now.

Not that he wouldn’t do it if he had to.

“Come on, officer,” he said, cajoling. “Do you really want me to go back to Sloane Kelly and tell her you didn’t want her help? After all this? All I want is someone to send a message to Vetra. Easy, yes? You don’t even have to let me in.”

She sighed, put upon, and rolled her eyes. Lifting her wrist, she tapped at her omnitool. “What’s the name?”

He swallowed and paused, quiet. His instincts told him to give an alias, but… “Vidal.” Looking away, he shifted his weight, ignoring the trickle of unease at revealing his name to her. It was different on Kadara, strangely enough. He’d been happy enough to throw his name around there anyway. But this was an ark, intimately connected with the Nexus. You had a good reason to keep your name out of the system now if you’d walked away in those early days.

It was worth it. Just this once, it was worth it.

“Done.” The woman jerked her head toward a corner of the platform they were standing on. “Now get out of my way. If Vetra doesn’t collect and vouch for you, be prepared for a night in the brig.”

“Trust me, madam, I’ve been prepared for that possibility since I came to Andromeda.”

“That’s wonderful for you.” She pointed. “Now please get out of the way.”

“Going, going.” He backed toward the corner she indicated, easy as could be, cooperative. “Thank you,” he added, because manners were worthwhile to have occasionally and the woman _had_ done him a favor. The flat look she gave him in return suggested she wasn’t too impressed with him, but that was okay. She didn’t have to be.

He checked the time on his omnitool and did his best to look as inconspicuous and uninteresting as possible. Occasionally, the guard looked his way, but every time she did he returned the look and projected as much innocence as he could. Eventually she stopped and he could relax just that little bit more.

Which was good, because he was left standing there for long enough that he began to wonder if Vetra would come. She had no reason to, of course, but he’d hoped curiosity would get the better of her. Or that the Pathfinder would find out and insist. Or that at the very least someone would want to come out and kick his ass for what he pulled, in which case, there was still a chance of salvaging something.

Of course, that wouldn’t work if nobody came. His bet hinged entirely on _someone_ showing up. Even if it was the krogan—Drack, his name was definitely Drack and he was as impressive a krogan as Reyes had ever seen—and there was a headbutt in Reyes’s future. Checking his omnitool again, he blew out a breath.

Maybe they were too busy…?

Maybe something was wrong.

The heavy clank of boots approached from behind. “You’ve got a lot of nerve coming here,” the voice said, gravelled, a turian voice, but even, too, and perhaps a little good humored. He turned and pretended he wasn’t at all surprised to find himself staring up at a turian woman. He didn’t let himself sigh in relief either. Vetra was a turian woman.

“Vetra Nyx?”

“That’s me,” she replied, crossing her arms. If the move was meant to show off her talons, it did a very good job of it. “Now what do you want from me, Reyes Vidal? I have a hard time believing Sloane Kelly would like to offer anything to us she hasn’t already given.” She looked Reyes up and down. “And why are you here?”

“So many reasons,” he answered, cavalier. There was only one reason that mattered. Well, no. There were two. “And Sloane forced me to come.”

She took that answer in stride. Reyes got the distinct impression that she took most things in stride. “Then that explains Meridian,” she said, less dubious than Reyes deserved. “Why are you _here?_ ”

Reyes gestured vaguely at the ark’s entrance. “Can we…?”

Vetra’s brow plate lifted. “No. You can tell me here just as well as you would be able to in there.”

Reyes dragged his hand down his face. _Don’t be rude. She has the right to question you. Getting annoyed won’t do you any good._ “I’m worried about Sara—about the Pathfinder.”

Vetra’s eyes hardened. “The Pathfinder is fine. Is that all?”

_Well, you’re here. Might as well lose what’s left of your dignity._ “I’d like to see her if it’s possible.”

Turians were notoriously good at staring people down and Vetra was no different. Good thing Reyes had some practice at that. “Uh huh.” Her mandible did flare slightly though. Was it a tell? Or nothing at all? “And why should I let you?”

“I owe her an apology.” He shrugged and pretended that fact didn’t hurt nearly as much as it did. “And I get the feeling I won’t have many opportunities now that she’s rescued the galaxy from the kett. People get lost in the shuffle when you’re the hero.”

“And you think you’re the people getting lost here?” She shrugged in turn and tapped her talons together, scrutinizing them. “I still don’t understand why I care.”

Reyes pursed his lips together, a frustrated scoff building in the back of his throat. He headed it off as best he could. There was no way he was going to out growl a turian. Better not to try. A different tack was called for. “What would the Pathfinder want?”

Vetra drew in a harsh, scathing breath. It was almost a scoff and then it turned into a light laugh. At least, that was what it sounded like to Reyes. “The Pathfinder isn’t always concerned with her own best interests.”

“I know a little something about that.” Their whole time together in Kadara could boil down to that fact. Again and again, she’d gone against her own best interests. But by god, look where it had gotten her. “I understand what it means.” _Just this once, I’d like to put her interests first. It just requires… a little more selfishness on my part. And some sympathy on yours, Vetra Nyx_. “I don’t intend to hurt her.”

“No, you did a perfectly adequate job of _that_ already.” Cocking her hip and adjusting her stance, Vetra tilted her head down, looking as disappointed in Reyes as he often felt these days. Both in himself and in others. There was a lot in Andromeda that was disappointing. “Seriously, what’s your angle?”

“No angle.” He tilted his head, considering. “No angle besides the obvious.”

“Which is?”

“I want to see her.”

Mandibles flaring, she shook her head. “You can’t.” Reyes opened his mouth to speak, but she beat him to it. “Not right now. She’s…”

His heart climbed his chest and practically lodged itself in his throat.

“…indisposed at the moment.” Vetra’s eyes cut toward the ark. Her mouth plates ground together. She blinked a couple of times and narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. “Oh, hell. Come on. You can’t see her yet. She’s having some trouble with her implant, but… I think she’d want you here.”

That did nothing to assist him with the problem his heart was having. “Why do you think that?”

Vetra offered an unimpressed stare. “Just who do you think it was who helped her get you back in Kadara?”

“You?”

“Me.” This time when her mandibles shifted, it was in pride, in pleasure maybe. Her arm arced toward the barricades and the guards. “That was a nice piece of work, by the way. I hope you appreciate it.”

“I do.” When she took a step, he followed. “Thank you.”

Vetra huffed. “I did it for the Pathfinder. Thank her if you intend to thank anyone.”

“I plan to.”

“Good.” She nodded at the guard he’d spoken to, who stepped aside when Vetra asked. She didn’t even hassle Reyes as they passed. “Then we’ll be fine.”

“Just like that?”

“Unless you want it to be more difficult.” She turned back to look at him. “I can accommodate you on that point if you’d like.”

Though Reyes intended to answer, he was immediately struck silent upon entering the ark’s atrium. He supposed it shouldn’t have impressed him as much as it did given that he’d been on the Nexus. But the still gleaming quality of it despite its recent hardships was enough to awe and humble him. The fact that there were already workers scrubbing and fixing what was wrong with it—the handful of sparking panels, the detritus on the floor—and going about their business with more alacrity than Reyes could ever remember seeing, it was… inspiring, in its way. It made him wish for a moment that he’d stayed on the Nexus, become something there instead of the way he’d gone instead. 

It was only a moment though and an uncomfortable one at that. He shunted the thought aside.

This was what Sara did for people. 

“No,” he said finally, returning to the conversation at hand. “That won’t be necessary.”

Vetra nodded. “Dr. Carlyle probably won’t let you near her at first. Same with Dr. T’Perro. But you can ask and they might let you sit with her eventually if I vouch for you. As long as you don’t cause trouble.”

Reyes’s hand snapped out and caught Vetra around the wrist. Her carapace was rough and smooth in turns beneath his fingers. “What happened out there? With the kett? With… everything?”

Vetra stilled, stamped her boots against the floor. Coughing into her fist, she stared at the ceiling. “I don’t know. I wasn’t with her. All I know is SAM malfunctioned and that she’ll be fine—she and her brother will be—but they’re both…“ Glancing around, she widened her eyes. “Maybe we should discuss this elsewhere.”

Heart tugging, he lowered his voice in a harsh whisper to keep from yelling. “Vetra!”

A sharp jut of pain lanced up his arm as she wrenched her wrist out of his grip. “Not here, okay? Nobody knows yet. Just—follow me. I’ll tell you what you want to know.” She jerked her head. “Head that way. Medical.”

He wanted to blame the climate controls in here for the clamminess of his skin, the prickle of a cold sweat around his hairline. He was used to Kadara’s heat, its humidity. Not the dry, cool air here, harsh and artificial. But he couldn’t do that. It was too much of a lie even for him. 

Keeping up with Vetra proved difficult now that she was determined, apparently, to get moving. He had to lengthen his strides to avoid falling behind. “Then tell me why you’re helping me.”

“I’m not an idiot, Vidal, but you must think I am.” She threw a cursory glance over her shoulder.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

Her arm sliced through the air toward a particular door, no different than the ones around it, but apparently recognizable to her all the same. “Enjoy the mystery. This is all you’re getting out of me.”

Engaging her omnitool, she tapped in a code. As the door slid open, he caught sight of more bright white and a lot of people in a lot of medical uniforms. 

And then: Sara’s still, wan, corpse-like form on a bed in the far corner. His legs almost gave out, the shock, the sight nearly too much on top of everything else. Scrapes flashed red and angry on her face, her neck, her hands. He’d heard her only a few hours ago. Now she—

“Who is this?” a gray-haired man asked as he veered toward them from his prior course across the floor. Though he was gruff, he couldn’t hide the underlying warmth and confidence in his voice. He gave his full attention to Reyes, just suspicious enough that Reyes felt safe liking him. “Excuse me, who are you?”

“Dr. Carlyle,” Vetra said, sounding very determined to soothe ruffled feathers should any be ruffled, “this is a _close friend_ of the Pathfinder’s. I thought he might be allowed to sit with her for a little while.”

“Not right now,” he said, arms crossed over his chest. “We’ve just put her through a round of treatments.” For a moment, he stood his ground and Reyes worried that Vetra had been wrong completely, that he wouldn’t be allowed to see her at all. “But, uh, he can come back in an hour or so, I guess.” He tipped his chin up at Vetra in a short, swift motion. “If you stick around to keep an eye on him.”

The thought of leaving now was more than Reyes could handle. “I won’t cause trouble.” For the first time in his life, that was possibly true. “And I won’t stay long.”

Carlyle sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just… stay out of the way,” he said, deeply aggrieved. “You can have five minutes now and I want you out until this evening at the earliest. Deal? That goes for you, too, Vetra. Spread the word around.”

Reyes bit his lip. Five minutes? That was nothing. No time at all. But if it was what he could get…

“You’re the boss here.” It was more than he could have hoped for anyway. 

“Mmhmm,” Carlyle answered, unimpressed, dry. “Just don’t let it get around. I might end up being responsible for people.” But he stepped back anyway and motioned the go ahead to Reyes. 

When Reyes looked at her, Vetra nodded and shooed him forward. 

Slowly, so very slowly that Reyes wondered if he was stalling himself, too, he stepped toward the bed, toward Sara. The sound of his footsteps echoed in his ears as he reached her side. The back of his neck prickled from the twin pairs of eyes inspecting his progress.

From here, she looked so frail and powerless. Reyes thought that didn’t seem fair. She was just sleeping as far as he knew. She could at least seem like she was at peace, resting up from the work she’d done. She deserved that much.

His fingers itched to reach out and touch her, but he didn’t have that right and he thought Carlyle probably classed ‘touching’ as trouble. He wanted, too, for Sara to see him and be able to return that touch if she wanted to. If she would. 

He was a man of many words, but not a single one felt right for this moment. Multiple languages failed him as every second slipped through his fingers. 

Maybe it was a blessing she wasn’t awake for this. She couldn’t witness his failure if she wasn’t aware of it to begin with. His hands pressed against the smooth, not terribly soft sheets of the bed, fingertips grazing as close as they dared to Sara’s arm, but he had to pull them away again. They only exaggerated the distance he’d put between them, the distance that Sara’d shown no interest in bridging.

Her giving him Karada wasn’t a cryptic message, an olive branch. He didn’t know what it was, but he couldn’t conclude it meant anything. Any reasonable man would have waited, would have felt the situation out. Might have sent another transmission instead of letting Sloane fucking Kelly drag them halfway across the galaxy.

_You’ve made a mistake here_ , he thought, wild, at a loss, fearful. For Sara and for himself. _What are you doing?_

_The same thing you always do: charge forward for your own benefit heedless of the consequences_.

Once upon a time, the only consequences he faced was a betrayal or two, a few new wounds that would heal into scars and become a good story to tell. Nothing he couldn’t manage happily. That was the cost of doing business in this galaxy, in any galaxy. And he was glad to pay it just to keep playing. But this? This was something else entirely. This was the Pathfinder. And she’d suffered for his mistakes.

“I’m…” His hands tightened in the sheets, his nails dragging and scraping across the surface. He blew out a frustrated breath and felt those unwanted eyes and attention on the back of his neck again, all the way down his spine. “I don’t know what I am.” He stepped back and bowed his head. “I don’t think I should have come.”

Turning away was both the hardest and easiest thing he’d ever had to do. And when he looked at Vetra, who wore a hint of concern and sympathy in her gaze, he knew he’d done the wrong thing. He definitely should have stayed as far away from the Pathfinder as he could. There were plenty of places left in Andromeda to hide no matter how widely her influence was felt. He could’ve done it. He knew how.

He knew better than to be lured in by carrots.

Squaring his shoulders, straightening his spine, he lifted his chin. “Vetra,” he said with as much dignity as he could muster. “Thank you.”

She fell into step at his side. “I’ll get you set up with a room somewhere,” she said, misunderstanding him entirely.

His heartbeat skyrocketed. All he wanted to do was get away. He didn’t want to be set up with a room; he didn’t need it. “That’s not necessary.”

“No?” The door to the medbay—private, Reyes decided, it was the only explanation for how devoid of commotion and non-personnel it was—swished open, nearly silent. “So where are you going to stay, then? Back on Sloane’s ship? Disappear back to Kadara for good?”

“Maybe.” The thought wasn’t exactly a pleasant one, but he could deal with it. Better than being here.

“And what about Ryder?”

_Sara can get along without me. She’s done just fine so far_. Reyes stopped and spun around, faced down Vetra as best he could given how much taller than him she was. Rightly so, it didn’t work very well. “What about her?”

“She’s going to want to see you now that you’re here.”

“Then don’t tell her I was here.” He lifted and lowered his shoulders in a cruel gesture. “Problem solved.”

Up and down Vetra looked, assessing and dismissing him just as quickly. “You’re kidding,” she said, disgusted or distressed or both. Her talon twitched vaguely in his direction and was yanked back at the last moment, like she’d thought better of what she wanted to do with it. He was glad for it, though he couldn’t have blamed her for it. “I’m not going to lie to her for you. That’s—”

A technician passed near them, offering a curious glance that disrupted their disagreement. Reyes refused to answer while the man was within hearing distance and waited, lips pressed firmly together. Vetra, too, refused to speak. But as soon as he rounded the corner and disappeared, Reyes pounced. “You said it yourself that she doesn’t always look out for her own best interests. So do it for her. You don’t like me or want me around, so don’t tell her I was here. She won’t feel compelled to speak with me.”

Vetra’s head tilted as though she was considering it. And for one moment, he thought maybe he would succeed in convincing her. “No,” she said finally, slow and deliberate and unhappy, like she’d been fooled and hated herself for it. Reyes empathized with that. “You can leave if you want, but I’m not keeping this from her.”

Well, that was better than nothing, though not as much as he hoped. “Okay, then.” He bowed his head slightly in bitter acknowledgment. “Thank you. I think I’ll do that.”

Vetra’s mouth opened and closed again and her eyes got that hardened edge to them, sharp enough to cut if you let it. Reyes knew how to not let it. He’d spent years of his life avoiding getting sliced up by knives.

Saluting, he backed away, eyes remaining on her for a time, before spinning on his heels and striding away.

He didn’t regret it.

He _didn’t_.

It was the right thing to do—for both of them.

*

“So you’ve decided to come slinking back, huh?” Sloane said, hands planted on her hips as she caught him doing just that. Her eyes followed him up the ramp into her ship, deeply, viciously amused. Her lackeys’ eyes all did the same and a couple chuckled or coughed to smother a laugh.

“Sloane,” he answered, aggressively pleasant. He hated her and she had to know it from the smile he gave her. “Fuck off.”

“We’re leaving in thirty,” she drawled, a warning. “Can’t stay away from Kadara for long. We’ve done our part.”

“That’s fine with me. Why wouldn’t it be?” He grinned even wider, more meanly. “I’m ready to return whenever you are.”

_Not true not true not true_ , his mind chanted, but he shoved that thought to the very back of his mind where it couldn’t do anything more to him than it had already done.

*

He breathed easier on Kadara.

It was as true now as it ever was. Stepping away from Sloane’s ship, the sun bright in the sky, he dragged the heated air of home into his lungs. His muscles shifted beneath his skin, relaxed, the stiffness loosening. This wasn’t Meridian. It wasn’t a perfect, pure paradise. Instead, it was exactly what he needed it to be.

Sara wasn’t there, but he’d learned long ago that even when things were perfect, they weren’t always perfectly right.

Nothing, though, was ever perfectly right and never had been. He had no reason to complain about that fact now.

And so he didn’t.

Things like this were easier when you didn’t complain about them, he’d noticed. And even if that wasn’t the case, he could tell himself that it was. He had so much to do and plan, he could pretend there was no room for this.

*

“Keema,” he said, checking his omnitool. His comm crackled to life in his ear. The manifest and inventory matched according to the twin datapads he juggled, along with crates and crates worth of the physical proof of it. The crates filled one whole storage container and it was his job to move it out from under Sloane’s nose. The angaran resistance, an outpost, sometimes the Nexus or private buyers, it didn’t matter where it went. Just that it was gone before she took notice.

That wasn’t true, exactly. He cared that it didn’t go to the enemy—whoever the enemy was now, they were all still working that out—and he wanted to help where he could. He filtered expensive, pointless goods to the people who paid the most and saved the important fundamentals for the people and places out there determined to make things better.

Sloane didn’t like that. There was no profit in it.

It didn’t matter to Reyes what she thought about it and he made his profits elsewhere, but it did make things difficult when you were trying to do something she didn’t like right beneath her nose. Thus the secrecy.

And Reyes was operating under stricter rules than almost everyone else here.

But he was smart and resourceful and he had some very good friends in all the right places. And it was fun undermining Sloane, far more satisfying than he could have hoped.

“Keema,” he repeated, tapping at his omnitool. His comms were working as far as he knew. There was no reason she shouldn’t be answering. “Are you…?”

Footsteps approached, slow and certain over the concrete flooring. His hand fell to his hip, lingered over his pistol where it was strapped to his armor. He didn’t draw it—no need to be hasty—but he would if he had to.

“Is that any way to greet a friend?” a familiar, beloved voice said. Stepping into the light Reyes had wired into the back of the container, she smiled, her teeth glinting under the harsh glare. The Pathfinder. Sara. _Sara_. She was here. Alive and well and fully healed. Her skin was flushed with health and every movement conveyed vitality. So different from the last time he saw her.

She’d upgraded her gear at some point, the armor thicker, more impressive, better protection against whatever she stood against. The assault rifle slung across her back looked like nothing Reyes had ever seen before. There was a keenness in her gaze that was new, a hunger—and oh, he knew what that hunger looked and felt like intimately. Her clarity of purpose filled the space and extended past the metal boundaries of the container. For all he knew, it stretched to the horizon. Past that to the bounds of Andromeda maybe.

He wouldn’t have been surprised if that was true.

Everything he’d been doing was in service of that vision; he just hadn’t realized it until now.

He couldn’t say he was upset about that.

Wiggling his fingers, he raised his hands. It was impossible to smile, but somehow he managed it anyway. Need scraped at the empty places inside of him, dull and demanding; an ache throbbed in his chest. A nerve in his cheek jumped, but he fixed the smile with even more support. “You know me well enough to know the answer to that,” he answered.

And it was supposed to be teasing, but the implications…? She would have had every right to call him out on his words. Did she know him well enough? She hadn’t seen his plan coming after all. There was nothing in her behavior toward him before that suggested she’d believed him capable of it.

But Sara was better than most people. “I know you wouldn’t shoot me,” she said, her voice sparkling with light amusement. Reyes had always been a betting man; he was sure enough that she was putting it on, that she was less than genuinely amused by him. Reyes would feel that way if he was in her position. “Besides, there’s no room for a sniper in here.”

Wincing, he lifted his palm to his chest and looked all around. “I’m sure I could hide one somewhere in here,” he said, affronted, willing to play along for as long as Sara wanted him to. His blood sang and his nerves twinged and his heart _thud thud thudded_ against his rib cage. Throat dry, he had a difficult time speaking. “If I really wanted to.”

Sara bit her lip, thoughtful, and nodded, searching the corners, a calculating gleam in her eye. It felt like a feint, a game, an entertainment vid, harmless. But this wasn’t harmless. “That may well be true. I wouldn’t take that bet at least.” For a moment, the jovial mask of hers fell, crumpling inward, a slab of granite pulverizing itself. But with a swift, sharp intake of air, she rebuilt it. If he’d blinked wrong, he might have missed it entirely.

Reyes hated, _hated_ that he was responsible for it. “Sara.” He took a single step forward and stopped as soon as she took a matching step back. “Okay. I deserve… that.”

She brushed the stray hairs away from her cheek and huffed. “I don’t… I just—” Her features took on a pleading quality almost and Reyes didn’t know how to assist her or even what she wanted from him.

He still didn’t quite believe she was _here_.

“Drack said I should kick your ass as far across this galaxy as it took to make me feel better,” Sara said. “He offered to help.”

Reyes laughed. “Drack is a smarter krogan than even I’ve given him credit for.”

“I thought about it.”

“Good. I’d think something was wrong if you didn’t.” He opened his arms wide, an invitation, a hope, really. “I’m all yours if you’d like.”

Sara smiled, the curl of her lip far more bitter than he’d remembered seeing before. “I realized that’s not the thing that would make me feel better.” She eyed him up and down, distant and wistful all at once. It pained Reyes to see it, like she was looking at him through bars she would not cross. “I’m not sure you can give me what would.” She took another step back. And another. And though what she’d said was deserved and not even harshly spoken, the heat of shame and regret burned through him anyway. “But I did want to thank you.”

Reyes’s head tipped down. To say he was confused was… an understatement. “For what?”

“For coming to Meridian. For helping. That means something here. Now.”

Groaning, he turned away, his hands landing on his hips. Pain built in his shoulders, the tenseness of his spine threatening to snap him in two. “Nothing complimentary brought me to Meridian.”

He was afraid to turn back around and look at her, but he couldn’t not do so. Not now that she was here. Cowardice had stayed his hand several times over already. So what he saw when he glimpsed her again stunned him, staggered him as surely as a bullet striking his armor. It was empathy, undeserved.

Or close enough to it to be indistinguishable. 

Her armor clanked, plate scraping against plate as she shifted and yet she remained steadfast now otherwise. There were no more backward steps. “What brought you then?”

“Sloane Kelly,” he answered, honest, annoyed all over again. The way she threw her weight around? It rankled. “And her compulsive inability to trust anyone.”

“I wonder why.” She brushed again at her hair. “Did Sloane Kelly insist you visit medbay, too?”

“If I say yes, would you believe me?” It wasn’t a question he had the right to ask, but he did so anyway. A joke, it was. A test. A feeling out of the new terrain of their relationship. 

Reyes was a betting man, but he never did anything without weighing the odds. 

Biting the inside of her cheek, Sara nodded. “I’ve decided to believe everything you say at the moment, Reyes.” And the way she emphasized that it was a choice made the whole situation perfectly clear to him. “I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t intend to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

If he fucked up, it was on him. He’d have to face his own reckoning. She wouldn’t hand it to him or demand anything or take it from him. 

Easy options, those. 

The Pathfinder would grant him some rope, let him choose what to do with it. 

The thing was, Reyes knew a thing or two about knots. Secure knots, trick knots. Any knot in between. She would let him off the hook if he chose the right one. But she would let him strangle, too, he thought, if he chose poorly. 

His eyes scanned the floor, caught on the perfect gleam of her boot, so unusual for Kadara. No one’s boots stayed clean here for long. “I thought I needed to see you.”

“You thought?”

“It didn’t seem right to be there once I arrived.” His hand twirled through the air. “While you couldn’t… I didn’t know you were ill.” He swallowed thickly. “You’re better now though?”

“Yes,” she answered. “I am.”

“Good.” Distracting himself, he rubbed his hands together. The dry, susurrating sound of them filled the void left by Reyes’s silence. He wished he had his gloves. His hands always gave everything away if you knew where to look. “That’s good. I’m glad that you’re fine.”

Sara’s eyebrows lifted, sympathetic maybe. “I have a good team of people looking out for me.”

Sara should have had more than her team looking out for her.

Either way, this was quickly turning into the most painfully embarrassing conversation Reyes had ever had. And he was trapped in it until Sara decided to leave or he tried to get past her. But as confined as he felt, he would see it through. Whatever Sara did here, he knew he was safe enough. She wouldn’t hurt him any worse than he’d hurt her and she wouldn’t do it on purpose.

His fears now were more ephemeral than that.

“Reyes.” She cleared her throat, turned her head, wouldn’t look him in the eye. “I only have one question in this whole thing.”

“Is that all?” He huffed, his breath rattling in his chest. It wasn’t quite a laugh. None of this was the least amusing.

Apparently it wasn’t to Sara now either because she didn’t use the chance to banter back at him. “Why?”

And there were a lot of ways to answer, a lot of things she could have been referring to, but Reyes had never lacked for a keen insight into other people’s behavior. He knew exactly which why she was referring to.

“Sloane was a threat,” he answered. It was never as simple as that, of course, but that was the core of it. “She cared only for power, but she pretended otherwise. Whatever it took to protect Kadara eventually became whatever it took to protect Sloane Kelly first. But by that time, for many, Sloane and Kadara were one and the same. I… thought I could do better.” He looked at her, held her gaze, could not get the rest of his words out if he didn’t. She had to know how serious he was about this. This was no lie: he’d wanted to secure Kadara Port from Sloane’s grasp and he’d wanted to do it himself, but it wasn’t only for selfish reasons. It wasn’t just that he wanted all that power for himself. He wouldn’t have risked Sara for purely selfish reasons. “I still believe that. I could have done better for everyone.”

It wasn’t an indictment of her despite how it might have sounded. He understood why she’d done what she did and didn’t fault her for the split-second decision he’d forced from her in that moment.

Sara’s eyes searched Reyes’s face, flicked back and forth as she took in the whole of him. What she saw, he couldn’t guess. He only hoped she actually did trust what she saw.

He had nothing truer to give to her if she didn’t.

As he waited for her response, his heart in his throat, he barely avoided tapping his fingers against his thighs. The seconds stretched, pulled to the breaking point, and just when he thought they would snap, she stepped forward. And then again. Her strides chewed up the distance between them. By the time she was done, she was within feet of him, so close he could see the myriad flecks of color in her eyes, close enough to smell the metal tang of her armor, the smoky, charged flavor of Kadara clinging to her hair and the scarf around her neck. She was close enough that, if he reached out, he could touch her and pull her close and not break her the way he might have while she was on Meridian, under medical supervision.

The way he might have broken her if he’d gotten his way before and he’d had to explain himself then or if she’d been a few seconds too late when she was saving Sloane’s worthless life in that cave. Or if or if or if…

“Sara…” His voice grew husky, took on a bare, whispered quality. He didn’t like the way it cracked, but he couldn’t help that now. The fact that he could speak at all was a miracle. She was beautiful and she was here and he’d told her everything that mattered finally.

Almost everything anyway.

She’d given him that chance.

“I wish I hadn’t hurt you in the process.”

“I know that,” she answered. Her hand lifted, slow, to settle on his chest. “I always knew that much.”

He smiled and caught that hand of hers with his. It was painful and joyous and terrifying to do so again. “That’s something.” Relief coursed through him, a cool trickle that at least she understood this much about him and his motivations. “That’s more than I hoped for to be honest.”

“There’s more of that going around than you’d think,” she said, wry. More like the woman he’d first met. She swallowed and her eyes dropped to his lips before she looked past him. 

That was as much as he needed to see to know: he hadn’t ruined things with her irrevocably. It might take time, but he could repair this. Lifting her hand, he brushed his thumb over her knuckles. The skin, cracked and dry, a little bruised and calloused, was warm beneath his touch. Inspecting it, he turned the limb over and raised it to his mouth.

Kissing the soft curve of her palm, he watched her the whole time, waiting for a sign that she no longer welcomed his touch. 

It never came. 

Instead, her eyes fluttered shut and she sighed, leaning toward him. 

This was forgiveness. 

He wasn’t sure what to do with it now that he had it. 

“Reyes,” she said in a harsh whisper, “you’re not the only person who’s had to make terrible decisions.”

“Ssh.” No, they wouldn’t play this game. Not now. Not ever if he had his way. At the very least, he wouldn’t have the Pathfinder second-guessing herself here. “That’s what life is. You don’t have to tell me.” He looked down at her, unsure. “Is that why you’re here?”

“No, I—I want to be here. I just want… you’re not alone in that, Reyes.” She shook her head and breathed out. “I don’t want to be alone in it either.”

“I’m sorry if you believed you were.” There weren’t many people who made the kind of decisions Sara did on a daily basis. It must have been so hard to be the Pathfinder and have that weight on her shoulders. Pedestals were unfair to everyone they elevated, though he was willing to bet, too, that her people would disagree with her on that score in the end. She wasn’t alone, but it was hard to see such things from the inside of it. “You don’t have to be,” he said. _You aren’t_ , he meant instead. No matter what happened, she’d have Reyes. Whatever decisions she made, she had him. “And I’m here if you want me to be.”

_I wish I could have always been there_.

It wasn’t anything like what he intended to say in a place he never would have expected to say it. A shipping container, really? But Sara didn’t seem to notice or care and that was the important thing. 

She breathed again, a quiet sigh that Reyes almost didn’t hear. What it indicated, Reyes couldn’t guess. He peered down at her hand again and squeezed lightly and waited. They stood on the edge of something here and he didn’t want to be the one who tipped them one way or the other; he’d done enough tipping situations to last a lifetime.

Sara, though? She was experienced with finding paths through things.

Perhaps she knew the way. A better way.

“In that case…” She looked up at him and there was a smile on her lips, small, but genuine. “Maybe you’d like to owe me a drink.”

Oh.

“I’d like to owe you significantly more than that,” he said, more serious than he’d ever felt in his life. Confident now, he let go of her hand and brushed the back of his own across her cheek. Her smile softened and she lowered her eyes briefly. He leaned in, slow, close enough to feel her breath against his mouth.

“Good,” she said, teasing. Just enough that Reyes thought it might be really be okay. “Why do you think I twisted Sloane’s arm about letting you come back to Kadara?” She bit her lip, stared up at him, daring. “So how much longer are you going to wait to pay up?”

With a challenge like that…?

He pressed a quick kiss against her mouth, nuzzled at her cheek with his nose, pulled her close despite the awkwardness of holding her with all that armor strapped to her body. He did it anyway, because he was determined and now she was laughing at him, he was sure of it, and he couldn’t think of anything better in this moment than cradling her head in his palms and memorizing every slope and curve of her features anew. The pad of his thumb brushed across her lower lip. “You’re quite something.”

“Is that a compliment?” Her hands found his waist and lower back, twisted in the thick, quilted fabric of his flight suit, pulling him toward her.

“I think so,” he said, ponderous. “More than that if I’m being honest.”

“And you’re always honest.”

A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. “Sometimes,” he answered, knowing the correct response this time. “Sometimes, I’m honest.”

“Then we make a good match. Because so am I. Occasionally.”

“That is very good to know.” But though he was teasing her and she him and it was all so very normal, uncertainty ate at him. “Do you really…?”

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.” Grabbing his chin between her forefinger and thumb, she tilted his head down. “If you’ve got any other identities you’re running, you might want to tell me about them, but I believe you when you say you wanted what was best for this place and that’s why you did what you did. I just… got in the way momentarily.”

“That’s not what I would call—”

Pinching harder, she shook her head. “Maybe. But I was there when you probably weren’t expecting me to be and you put me in a position I didn’t want to be in. I can forgive you that. Kadara’s not like the Nexus. It’s not like Aya or Meridian. I can accept that what you did had nothing to do with me. Just—trust me from now on. That’s all I want. Can you do that?”

Reyes nodded. This was probably the real question, the most important one. “I don’t trust anyone the way I trust you. It wasn’t trusting you or not that kept me from telling you about The Charlatan.”

“Then we won’t have a problem.” This time when she took a step back, she grabbed Reyes’s hand. “Now why don’t we liberate some of Sloane’s reserves from her and find a nice spot where we can watch the Kadaran sun rise? Maybe you can tell me how you’d make Kadara better. We’ll see what we can do to get Sloane on board?”

Willing and able and perfectly happy to do all of those things, Reyes trailed after her, holding tight to her hand, a hand he never intended to let go of now that it was in his again. “You are a woman of distinction, Sara Ryder.”

_And I am a very, very lucky man_.


End file.
